Kessler, Treves

We had a very pleasant stay of 10 nights at the Pallagino, enjoyed a lot the company of Sandy, Rajen, Kingsley and Athena for their warm welcome and interesting discussions, and of course the lovely home made cocktails and gastronomics dinners ! The environment is fine and the house is only 3 minutes walk from the large and heavenly beach of Flic en Flac (on the other side on the main road). The accomodations are fine with Wifi, AC and TV in the upstairs living room, although the bathrooms would need renovation and swimming pool cleaned which I mentionned to Rajen. Rajen made us visit the island's hotspots and we really had good time. If you do not expect a 5 stars hotel with sea view and like friendly and family atmosphere, with the luxury of chef dinners, this is THE place in Flic en Flac to go ! We will definitely come back.

My wife and I have just returned from a 2 week stay in Mauritius and we opted for the half board bed, breakfast and dinner deal at the Pallagino having read all the very positive reviews and being avid foodies ourselves. Maybe they were having a bit of an off period, but we came away quite disappointed overall with our experience at Pallagino. The family is perfectly nice, and they were very accommodating and sensitive to my wife who wasn’t feeling very well due to being pregnant. But before you commit to flying for 12 hours from Europe to stay there, there are some things you need to know. Communication – when you email Sandy at the email address on their website you are not communicating with her. It is her husband Rajen who spends much of the day drumming up business on the internet. We thought this a little misleading as the emails are signed “Sandy” and there is a big difference in perception of who you’re dealing with. Location – the guest house is NOT “beachside” or 50 meters from the beach at Flic en Flac as some of their marketing and reviews suggest. It is 2 and 1/2 blocks from the road you have to cross to get to the beach. The pool – we didn’t use it once as it appeared not to be cleaned very regularly. The automatic cleaner was sometimes on but the filter and pump were often switched off. Cleanliness – on arrival we found quite a lot of stray hair on the floor and mats around the bed and the bed sheet did not fit properly. To our amazement we discovered the rooms were only cleaned every 3 days excluding weekends and holidays. Water – we only had hot water for about 4 to 5 days of our stay as there were problems with the boiler. No explanation was offered until we asked. No real apology either. We had to go down on multiple occasions to ask for the pump to be turned on in order to shower. Food – the dinners were good and sometimes very good. Every evening we sat down to “cocktails” – I passed mostly on those and stuck with beer – dinner was then served buffet-style and included a different thing every night – Indian, creole, Chinese and even spag bol one night. There were no real howlers but we were disappointed by the lack of fresh seafood. Very sad given we were sold on the culinary aspect of the guest house. We expected more given their tagline is “5 star holidays at 1 star prices.” If I was promoting gourmet cuisine in a former French colony that makes its own coffee, I’d be serving fresh French bread, real coffee, pain au chocolate, croissants, fresh fruit salad, and offering a different cooked option every morning. At lunchtime one day I asked to have a beer and discovered they turn the fridge off at night, obviously to save money, so our cheese temperature had been going up and down like a yo yo. A possible health risk, it could have had devastating results for my wife if I hadn’t found this out. Tours – Rajen will organise tours around the island for you. But you can get much cheaper – although not private – options in town from any number of operators. They recommend TiCabo for diving but I used Sea Urchin in town who were £4 cheaper for each dive and quite brilliant! Some reading this might ask why we didn’t complain while we were there. When we arrived we were exhausted after a 12 hour flight so ignored the hairy room and cleaned it up ourselves. As I said at the start of this review; the place is affordable and the family perfectly congenial, but you need to be aware that it isn’t anything like 5 stars. More like 3 at best. We hope the family will take this feedback as constructive criticism and make a little more invest in the whole operation to live up to the expectations they set. All in all we had a great time in Mauritius; the people are very friendly, the beaches lovely, the diving excellent and the weather divine.

My husband and I stayed with Sandy and her family for 7 days in July 2009. We had a very good experience! Our accommodations included breakfast and dinner, and the price was really reasonable. We wanted to spend our money going on day-trips, and although Mauritius has very good resorts we knew we wouldn't spend too much time within any hotel, so Sandy's guest house was the perfect solution. The food she prepares is very tasty and very local, which is an advantage compared to staying in a large resort, and the whole family was very accommodating to our requests. Rajen, Sandy's husband was an excellent guide to the island. He knows the island's "secrets" and helped us with renting a car and guiding us around. We ended up knowing the island much better than if we had tried without his help. The only disadvantage of the guest house is that the room we stayed in did not have a bathroom. But we had a bathroom across the hall for our use only. Sandy said the next step in improving the guest house is to have all en-suite bathrooms, so that will be solved and we'll be glad to be back. The last observation is about Mauritius itself, not particularly about Pallaginos guest house. If you do not smoke, please be aware that a lot of the people on the island do, so that might be a problem at times.